Across Pandora
by yawn
Summary: A violent prelude to Borderlands 1. An Atlas employee by the name of Arkyle comes to Pandora for a simple job. Everything goes south so he takes it upon himself to kill the killers of his friends. How far will he go in order to get his revenge? And what will he do when he learns of the vault and all of it's treasures? Rated for language and other violent things. R&R and enjoy.


A/n: Haven't written in a while. Meh. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Borderlands. Blah blah blah, etc etc etc.

Chapter 1: Day 1

Arkyle rested on his belly breathing very slowly. The butt of the sniper rifle pressed solidly against his shoulder as he stared through the scope at the bandit camp below him. He'd been on this rock called Pandora for a few months now. He'd come in fresh, no combat experience at all, with a group of his buddies on a job from Atlas to check in on things. Things had started off okay, and then they left the Atlas compound. Pandora was a shit hole. Advertised as this amazing get away.

Bullshit.

They'd made their way to the settlement of New Haven and had been in town all of five minutes when everything turned to shit. Bandits had attacked the settlement and Arkyle and company weren't prepared. Being fresh off the bus as the settlers had said, they didn't even have weaponry to try and defend themselves with. They had taken cover in a shack, pressed tightly on the dirty floor, to wait out the gun battle. It lasted for what seemed like hours. And then the dirty cloth door was lifted and in stepped the most musclebound pile of evil Arkyle had ever seen armed with an even larger machine gun.

He looked upon the group of surveyors and grinned before opening fire. Everyone burst into motion.

The barrage of bullets tore into a man named Ronald, the first three bullets burrowing into his chest and the fourth going into his gut before it exploded, bisecting the poor man. The rest rushed the giant man who began to turn. Seconds felt like hours as they piled on top of him and then were thrown off as if they were the weakest of insects. The gunner then trained his sights on the group again and opened up. The group of five lost another member as they scrambled about in the shack. The second casualty was put down with one bullet, his head popping like a melon and showering everyone inside with gore.

The three remaining members made another dash at the man, Arkyle going low while the other two went high. The musclebound oaf reacted with what seemed like unnatural speed, Arkyle would find out later that he was just pumped up on some form of addictive narcotic that increased the users reflexes, and grabbed a man named Kevin by the throat. He hefted him up as he was being punched in the face by him and with ease crushed his neck in his hand. The man kicked Arkyle away and then turned on the other man attacking him. By this time he'd gotten a bloody nose and with a roar he threw a punch into the other man's face, staggering him before he shoved him outside into the gun fight.

Arkyle was alone with the machine gunner now. His friends were dead. The gun was being lifted.

Arkyle lashed out with his foot and aimed his kick at the gunner's testicles. He roared in pain and put one hand down to try and cover himself. Arkyle kicked again and again, knocking the hand out of the way until the gunner dropped his weapon and dropped to his knees. Arkyle stood quickly, panting hard before he kicked the man in the face, knocking him over onto his back. He leaned down and grabbed the machine gun and began unloading on the gunner. The bullets bore into his chest for ten rounds before an eleventh burst, causing his chest cavity blow open, blood and bits of bone showering upwards.

Arkyle panted as he stood there for a few seconds, shaking as adrenaline rushed through him. There was still fighting going on, at least he thought so. His ears were ringing so badly he thought they were bleeding. He didn't have any broken bones as far as he could tell but he'd always been told he wouldn't feel that sort of thing immediately when adrenaline got pumping. He looked around at the corpses of his friends and took a deep breath before stepping through the drape.

His friend Adam lay nearly ten feet away, body riddled with bullet holes. A bullet slammed into the shed near Arkyle's head so he dropped down behind a barrel beside him. He looked out at the area and tried to steady his breathing. The fight was still going on. As far as he could tell there were two settlers lying dead and a half dozen or so bandits. Risking a peek out towards where the shot had come from he saw two bandits making their way towards his hiding spot.

They had pistols and weren't heavily armored. They didn't look nearly as intimidating as the gunner that had slaughtered his friends. He still didn't understand how he'd managed to kill him. He put that thought to the side when he heard a whistle. He looked up and on a roof was the female leader of this settlement, Helena Pierce. Her revolver in hand she was aiming at the bandits who had turned their attention to her. Taking the distraction for what it was, Arkyle spun out from behind the barrel, machine gun to his shoulder already, and he opened fire on the bandits. The explosive rounds tore into the two men, one having his chest blown open and the other having both legs taken off at the hip before Helena put a bullet in his head.

Arkyle stood slowly from his crouch and looked up at Helena and gave a shaky smile before something punched into his left shoulder. He flew back a couple feet and landed on his back to look up at the sky. His shoulder hurt like hell. He looked and saw blood and resisted the urge to scream. There were two more shots and a scream from a man and then he was looking up at Helena. She was saying something about how he was going to be okay. All he could do was look at her and wonder if she was going to be the last thing he saw.

She wasn't. He woke up a few days later on a dirty hospital bed, his head pounding and the worst taste in his mouth. There was an IV in his arm and he groaned as he pulled what had to be the biggest needle in the fucking world out of his arm and got out of bed. He looked around and saw a mirror and approached it. All he could think was that he looked like shit. The mirror looked like shit, but so did he. He wiped a thick layer of grime from the mirror and turned on the water in the sink in front of him. His left should was thickly bandaged. It hurt to lift his arm. He looked himself over in the mirror and then began to wash his hands and face and hair in the sink. When he finished he heard chuckling behind him and he turned.

And there stood the scariest thing he'd ever seen.

_Is this the guy who operated on me?_

He introduced himself as Zed. They chatted for a few minutes about the operation and how his shoulder was and after finding out where his clothes were, Arkyle decided it might be best to get the hell away from the doctor. He left his "clinic" and entered New Haven again. If it was possible, Arkyle thought it looked worse than before. He made his way through town, getting a few nods from the various settlers, and finally found his way to Helena's office. It was open, the door having been destroyed in the bandit attack, so Arkyle let himself in and walked into her office.

She sat there behind her desk looking incredibly pissed. She informed him that Atlas had pulled out and left most of their employees behind with the prisoners that had been offloaded. There wasn't a way off world.

Basically telling him they were fucked.

At first, Arkyle took the news poorly. But then he gave it some thought. The bandits that had come and got his friends killed had to have some kind of leader for their little crew. There really wasn't any real reason to head back to work for Atlas because they presumed he was dead, and honestly he didn't have much to go back to on Earth. An idea formed. He was going to hunt down every last son of a bitch that was responsible on this rock for his friends being dead.

And that's how it progressed. He picked up a few weapons from the local arms dealer, Marcus, and worked off his purchases by helping out around the settlement. Giving Scooter a hand repairing various buggies that came in, giving working on the generators a go, and so on and so forth. He also learned how to use the weapons.

And so here he was, four months after arriving on the planet of Pandora, lying down with a sniper rifle trained on a drug crazed rocket launcher wielding steroid abusing freak.

He had to admit, as he pulled the trigger, that life here wasn't so bad.

Chapter End

A/n: I enjoyed writing this more than I should have. If you liked it, leave a review. If you hated it, leave a review and tell me I suck. If you want me to do something different, leave a review.

Until next time, stay thirsty my friends.


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